


Ossia and Encore to the Square Root of Three

by savvyliterate



Series: The Road Less Traveled [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:18:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvyliterate/pseuds/savvyliterate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River thought of the look the Doctor had given her four days earlier, how sad he had been when he’d seen her with her parents. As much as she wanted to travel, as much as she wanted to throw him onto the closest horizontal surface and sate the itchy, crawly desire that had been getting worse, her gut knew the truth. Something had happened to either her or her parents, and her time with them was running out. She needed to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ossia

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an alternate retelling of "The Power of Three," but then turned into something more. The title comes from the musical phrase "ossia," which is a musical term for an alternate passage to be played instead of the original passage and "encore," which is a musical term for playing something again. Every positive number has two square roots.
> 
> Any recognizable dialogue in the story comes from [the transcript of "The Power of Three,"](http://jpgr.livejournal.com/146389.html) written by Chris Chibnall.
> 
> This contains spoilers for a monster appearing in the finale of series 7b.

_Every time Rory and I flew away with the Doctor, we’d just become part of his life. Even though he married our daughter, he never stood still long enough to become part of our real lives. Come to think of it, neither did she. As much as Mels was a constant presence in my life until I was 22, in the 10 years after that, River breezed in and out as much as the Doctor did. We never knew which her we were going to get, and like the Doctor, we started to maintain a diary._

_Then came the year of the slow invasion. The time our daughter and son-in-law came to stay. And like two trains, our lives suddenly collided._

\-----

The psychic paper beneath her pillow was burning, and River was still halfway asleep as she reached for it and flipped it open.

_“The park in front of your parents’ house,”_ it read. _“22 July 2020. Come quickly.”_

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and swung her legs over the side of her cot. She tried to remember the last time she properly saw Amy and Rory in London, but that would require a strong cup of coffee and perusing her diary. First, planning an escape. There was always phoning out for 500 pizzas for intergalactic delivery. She hadn’t done that lately, and-

The paper burned again, and River glanced down. _“Don’t bother with dressing. Come now.”_

If the summons had been to any other location, she would have taken the command much differently. But this was the Doctor, and he was with her parents. Her hearts seized as she grabbed her dressing gown and shoved her diary and tablet into the enlarged pocket. Something was wrong with Amy and Rory. She dropped to her knees and peeled the emergency vortex manipulator and pocket plasma blaster she kept off the underside of the mattress. Thank goodness they hadn’t confiscated this batch yet. She strapped on the communicator, palmed the blaster and left Stormcage with the alarms blaring after her.

She materialized at the entrance to the park. Slowly, carefully, she did a sweep of the area. Nothing out of the ordinary. No aliens, no unusual human behavior. Just dozens upon dozens of little black cubes heaped upon window ledges, cars, postboxes, doorsteps, tucked into flower pots and more. Warily, she approached one and picked it up.

“Good morning, dear!”

River looked up to see the Doctor perched atop the jungle gym, lanky limbs entwined around the bars. He lay on his stomach, peering at the cube with a magnifying glass. “Good morning, sweetie,” she said slowly and did another scan of the area. “Where are my parents?”

“Sleeping, I imagine! They do entirely too much of that. So much of the universe to see, and they waste approximately 30% of their lives sleeping. And what were you up to?”

“Sleeping!” She approached the jungle gym, more than annoyed. “Doctor, I’m not even dressed.”

“Please, River, we’re in a public park.” He glanced up and spotted her dressing gown. “Oh.”

“I am going to get a cup of coffee from my parents, and then I’m going back to bed.”

“You’re not even curious about these?” He waved a cube at her.

Actually, she _was_ curious. Extremely so. But the Doctor was being petulant, and she was standing in an old dressing gown and wool socks in a public park at the crack of dawn. The cubes didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat, so coffee first.

“Doctor!” Amy’s voice echoed from across the street, and River turned to see her parents rushing across bearing cubes of their own. “River! Oh, Doctor, did you drag her out of bed as well?”

The Doctor saluted them with his cube. “Invasion of the very small cubes. That’s new. Come along, Ponds. All of you.”

“Does he call random people Ponds as well?”

And for the first time, River noticed Brian Williams standing just behind Rory, holding a cube of his own. Her breath caught. No, she wanted to say. No, she wasn’t a stranger. She had spent as much time in his house as a child as she had in Tabetha and Augustus Pond’s.

“Oh, sorry.” The Doctor scrambled down from the jungle gym and waved his hand absently at River as he strode toward the TARDIS, studying the cube. “Dr. River Song, Brian Williams. Brian, the wife.”

“You’re married?” Brian gasped.

“That’s not even half of it,” Rory muttered, _sotto voce_.

The surprise worked better than the longed-for coffee, and River’s brain began working normally again. She herded them all to the TARDIS just as the Doctor set one of the cubes on the console and held his hand out for hers. She handed it over and took out her tablet to scan them. “They’re absolutely identical,” she determined. “It’s like someone manufactured them and distributed them all over the place.”

“What if they're bombs? Billions of tiny bombs. Or transport capsules, maybe, with a mini-robot inside. Or deadly hard drives. Or alien eggs. Or messages needing decoding. Or they're all parts of a bigger whole. Jigsaw puzzles that need fitting together,” Brian guessed.

“Blimey, Dad!”

“Very thorough, Brian. Very, very thorough. Well done. Stay here. Watch these. With me, remaining Ponds. Dear, I need some equipment from your library.” With that, the Doctor sprinted up the stairs and disappeared down the corridor toward River’s library.

Amy tugged River aside. “Is this an alien invasion? Because that’s what it feels like.”

“There’s something in the cubes, perhaps?” Rory turned over the cubes. “You know, like in _Spaceballs_ , when the alien pops out of the guy’s stomach.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Amy groaned.

“I don’t know,” River admitted. “I know about as much as you do. I’m not finding  any data on these cubes, and if the Doctor’s just as clueless, then we need to do additional research.”

“Which we will do in your kitchen, Amy,” the Doctor announced, lumbering down the stairs with an armload of equipment. “I need to set up a lab.”

“Why our kitchen? Can’t you just do it on the TARDIS, where there’s already a lab?” Amy said, following the Doctor out of the TARDIS.

“Because I want to observe the cubes in their natural habitat.”

“I think you really just want an excuse to take over our kitchen,” Rory said, following.

River turned back to Brian. “Will you be OK?”

“Of course.” He waved her off, then frowned. “You weren’t with him the last time. When we were with those dinosaurs on that spaceship. You know, with Nefertiti and the hunter.”

It was an automatic reflex to say it was spoilers, but she bit her tongue. Brian wouldn’t know any better. “I’m a time traveler, like the Doctor,” she explained. “We don’t always travel together, and we meet at different points of our timeline.”

“Kind of like that book. The Time Traveler’s Wife.”

Which she actually wrote under a pen name, but she wasn’t going to tell Brian that. “Yes, very much so. We’ll be back soon.”

She walked into the kitchen of her parents’ home just in time for the Doctor to cut across her path with the largest pot they owned. He filled it with water. “Need to cook up some cubes, see what happens.”

“Well, that’s not going to be my breakfast,” Amy muttered.

“Right, I’m due at work,” Rory said and kissed Amy’s cheek and patted River’s shoulder. “You two can handle him.”

The Doctor glanced up from the pot, astonished. “What? You’ve got a job?”

Three mirror expressions stared back at him, with equal parts astonishment and exasperation. “Of course he has a job, sweetie,” River said.

“What do you think Amy and I do when we’re not with you?” Rory asked.

“I imagine mostly kissing,” the Doctor replied.

Rory arched an eyebrow and shrugged, pleased with that.

“I write travel articles for magazines, and Rory works at the hospital nearby,” Amy explained as Rory disappeared into the lounge.

“My shift starts in an hour,” he called. “You don’t know where my scrubs are?”

“In the lounge, where you left them,” Amy replied and moved to the coffee pot.

The Doctor startled and stared blankly at Amy before catching River’s eye. She winked, and he blushed. There was indeed some degree of truth to her parents spending their time mostly kissing. He picked up a wooden spoon and poked a bit at the cubes. “Well, it doesn’t look like there’s electrics in there to fry.”

“Which is probably a good thing.” River bussed his cheek, and before she could pull back, he quickly turned his head and returned the kiss. He glanced at Amy’s back, blushed and resumed prodding the cubes with the spoon.

“Amy, are those spare clothes still upstairs?” She chose her words carefully, in case Brian happened to walk in. She wasn’t sure how he would take the Ponds keeping a room for her, though to most people they merely called it their guest room.

“Yes, in the bureau. I’ll be up myself in a second. Want a coffee?”

“Love one,” she said gratefully and headed for the stairs.

She had helped the Doctor pick the house out, insisting there be at least two bathrooms. She ducked into the downstairs loo, splashed water on her face, then headed upstairs. The clothes were where Amy said they would be, and River quickly began to change. She’d just pulled on clean underwear and picked up the light sundress when the soldiers burst in.

“Hello, boys,” River said casually and reached for her dressing gown.

“Ma’am, I insist you come with us.”

She pulled her blaster and trained it on the soldier who spoke. “I normally wouldn’t mind having a roomful of soldiers burst in on me when I’m in my knickers, but my husband’s downstairs. He’d get ever so jealous.”

“River?”

Through the gaps between the soldiers, she saw Rory being marched out of his own room, wearing the top half of his scrubs and pants. His eyes went wide before squeezing them shut. “Sorry, sorry,” he babbled. “Look, can’t you at least let us finish putting on our clothes?”

“There’s six of us,” one of the soldiers pointing his gun at Rory said.

“Yeah, well, she takes after her mother, and I don’t want her to get cross. Or put holes in the wall. We just got a new paint job.”

“Dad, I’m not going to hurt them very much.” But because she didn’t want anything to happen to Rory, she lowered the blaster and allowed the soldiers to march them downstairs.

They heard voices: the Doctor, Amy, and a third voice that River recognized from when she was doing the research for her thesis: Kate Stewart, the daughter of one of the Doctor’s oldest friends and head of scientific research at UNIT.

“Tell me, since when did science run the military, Kate?” the Doctor’s voice floated toward them from the kitchen as they walked through the lounge.

“Since me. UNIT's been adapting. Well, I dragged them along, kicking and screaming, which made it sound like more fun than it actually was.” Kate didn’t bat an eye as Rory and River were marched into the kitchen.

“All my life, I dreamed of standing where you are right now,” Amy told River a bit wistfully.

“I know the feeling,” she replied and they shared a smile. It was an Amy and Mels moment, brought on by stealing certain adult magazines and swapping fantasies as they lay on the floor of Amy’s childhood bedroom. Of course, reality was a bit different as Rory covered himself and gawked at Amy, and the Doctor was doing his best to look at River and not look at her at the same time. He failed and wound up babbling.

“Right, cubes. Cubes! What do we know about the cubes?” He snatched the pot off the stove and held it so it strategically covered a good bit of his lower body.

Ignoring the Doctor, Kate studied Amy, Rory, and River and tut-tutted a bit. “The family Pond-Williams. Amelia Pond, Rory Williams, and their child rumored to be born off-planet and older than they are.” She held up her scanner, nodding when River’s two heartbeats flared into view. “Interesting to see our files be confirmed. As for the cubes, we've been freighting them in from around the world for testing. So far, we've subjected them to temperatures of +/-200° Celsius, simulated a water depth of 5 miles, dropped one out of a helicopter at 10,000 feet and rolled our best tank over it. Always intact.”

“That's impressive. I don't want them to be impressive. I want them vulnerable, with a nice Achilles's heel,” the Doctor said.

“We don't know how they got here, what they're made of, or why they're here,” Kate said.

“And all around the world, people are picking them up and taking them home.”

“Like iPads have dropped out of the sky. Taking them to work, taking pictures, making films, posting them on Flickr and YouTube. Within three hours, the cubes had 1,000 separate Twitter accounts.”

Amy flushed and the Doctor muttered under his breath about Twitter. Amy’s desire to check Twitter had landed them into an awkward and sad situation in the days before the Doctor erased the records of himself. River frowned. Which made no sense, when she stopped and thought of it. The Doctor being this far along in her parents’ timestream meant that they were passed the time he had gotten his records wiped. How did UNIT still have them? Maybe Oswin Oswald’s record wipe hadn’t been as throughout as they thought.

“I've recommended we treat this as a hostile incursion. Gather them all up and lock them in a secure facility, but that would take massive international agreement and cooperation,” Kate said.

“We need evidence,” the Doctor protested. “The cubes arrived in plain sight, in vast quantities, as the sun rose. So what does that tell us?”

“They wanted to be seen and noticed?” Amy guessed.

“Well, more than that. They want to be observed. So we observe them. Stay with them, round the clock. Watch the cubes.” He set the pot back on the stove. “Day and night. Record absolutely everything about them. Team cube, in it together.”

“Right. This member of team cube is going to be late for work. Can I really go get dressed now?” Rory begged.

\-----

“Well, I predict that this will be a disaster of epic proportions,” Amy said as she and River sat at the kitchen table, a line of cubes arranged between them. “So, we’re just sentenced to watching these cubes for days?”

“Hardly. I doubt the Doctor will last for five hours.”

“You’re giving him an awful lot of credit.”

“He’ll find it fascinating at first. He’ll play with the cubes, think they’re terribly romantic in a way. He’ll try various experiments, and we’ll pop down to M&S to replace the pots he ruins. Then he’ll get impatient, yell at the cubes and pout just a bit. Then, he’ll be determined that the cubes won’t beat him and will stare petulantly for another hour before giving up and coming to us and complaining about it. Five hours, Mother.”

“Yeah, I know that much. I’d given him three.”

They exchanged smiles and sipped at their coffee.

“Pond, I accidentally ruined that frying pan of yours! Sorry!”

Amy and River clinked coffee mugs and laughed.

“I’m surprised the Doctor sent for you though. Sure, the cubes are odd, but it’s not like it’s the end of the world,” Amy said.

“What? Can I not want to see my wife?” The Doctor shuffled out of the kitchen and dropped into the third chair, cube in hand. He tossed it from hand to hand.

“Doctor, you were doing everything possible when we were on the TARDIS to keep us from finding out that you were taking our daughter on dates while we were sleeping.”

“That’s because I didn’t know she was your daughter then.”

“The amount of spoilers flying about is fascinating.” River picked up her tablet and brought up the morning news, which was all cube-related. “I’ll just pretend I’m not sitting here listening.” She glanced at the Doctor out of the corner of her eye and lowered her tablet. There, just for a brief second, there was a look of unspeakable grief.

“Brian’s still in the TARDIS. I’ll go round him up for some lunch.” Amy pushed away from the table. “Then, I’ve got to get some writing done.”

River waited until the front door closed behind Amy before turning to the Doctor. She wouldn’t have long. “OK, what’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Doctor pulled out his sonic and ran it over the cube again, muttering under his breath.

“Yes, you do, don’t lie about it. I can see it in your face, honey. What happened? Why am I really here?”

With a sigh, he put both the cube and sonic down, but wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Spoilers,” he said after a moment.

He wasn’t talking about the two of them, she realized, and her stomach knotted. Something had gone wrong. Something with her or her parents or all three of them. “It’s going to be all right, my love.”

He patted her hand and gave her a sad smile. Then he leaned over and kissed her cheek, lingering a moment as he pressed his face against hers. She turned her head to turn it into a proper kiss just as the door opened and she heard Amy and Brian’s voices. It was enough to have the Doctor pull away. But he kept holding River’s hand and didn’t let go until Amy set their lunches in front of them.

\-----

True to River’s prediction, the Doctor lasted five hours before he flopped theatrically on the sofa in the lounge.

“Well, this is getting boring,” he muttered and tried to spin a cube like he would a basketball. “Anything happening elsewhere?”

“Nothing on the telly or online,” Amy said from the table, where she had her work spread out. “What, did you expect for them all to suddenly snap together like Legos and take over this corner of London?”

“Yes!”

River set aside the magazine she’d been reading and got to her feet. “Come on, sweetie, we’re going out.”

The Doctor perked up and leaped to his. “Going out! I like going out. Going out means doing something. Come along, Pond.”

“You two go without me. I’ve got a deadline.” Amy dismissed them with a wave and squinted at her computer. She rubbed her eyes. “Think I need glasses,” she muttered.

The Doctor stilled and stared at Amy for a long moment, then shook his head briefly. “Deadlines will still be there when you get back. Hurry up and fetch your coat.”

“It’s the middle of July, I am not wearing a coat. Go, spend some time with River. You don’t see her enough. Check on Brian, would you? He headed back to the TARDIS after lunch.”

“Sweetie, let Amy finish her work,” River coaxed, all but pulling him toward the door. She scooped up the purse Amy had lent her and took the spare keys off the hook. “Mum, want us to bring back takeaway?”

“Oh, that’d be lovely!” Amy’s eyes lit up. “I’d go for a curry, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll get enough for all of us.” River hesitated. She knew what her parents like, what the Doctor was willing to eat. “What about Brian?”

“Get him some of the beef. He’s good with spices. There’s a tenner in my wallet, take that with you. No hitting up cashpoints, young lady.”

River rolled her eyes good-naturedly and ignored the wallet.

As they walked out to the street, the Doctor stared at River as if she’d been speaking some odd language. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked for what felt like the tenth time that day as she turned to the right and headed toward the shopping district.

“That’s all very domestic,” he said, waving back at her parents’ house. “Jobs and deadlines and takeaway curry.”

“That’s what happens when you’re not here, sweetie. Their lives go on, and they’re happy with what they’ve made of them. You gave them a huge financial boost when you got them the house and car. They can pursue their dreams, not just make do because they’re tied to a mortgage.” She took his hand. “Amy’s no longer a little girl sitting on her suitcase waiting for you to come and rescue her.”

He didn’t say anything as they wound their way through the streets. It was the longest he’d been quiet all day, and it was enough for River to worry. He peered at the cubes blankly, his thoughts in the past. The Marks & Spencer had arranged the cubes into an artful display, while H&M was offering a sale where they’d be given out free with a £50 purchase. Hobbycraft was offering craft ideas, and various recycling groups were already starting petitions on how to dispose of them properly. As if they had any idea what proper was when it came to the cubes.

“Do they still need me?”

The Doctor asked this in a small voice as River used her bankcard at a cashpoint. She’d been telling the truth when she waved off Amy’s money. She made sure to have her own accounts seeded for this era. “Of course they still need you, sweetie. They’re always going to need you. They’re just not going to wait for you any longer. There’s a difference. They’re in their 30s now. Ten years of you roughly. Of us, really.”

“Had things been different, you’d be what … 8? 9?”

“9. But they’re not different, and I keep telling you, I’m happy with my life. So are they.” River said as she approached the M&S. She had hoped to spend just a few minutes picking up new pans, but wound up spending about 15 minutes luring the Doctor away from the toys and the sweets in the food hall.

“Brian doesn’t know about you,” the Doctor pointed out as they headed for the curry restaurant that Amy preferred. He shifted the bag of pans from one hand to the other.

“No. None of them do. Brian, Tabetha or Augustus.”

“And there’s no pictures.”

River glanced over her shoulder at him. “Sorry?”

“In the house. There’s no pictures of you, River, I checked. There’s lots of me.”

It was something that hadn’t escaped River’s notice either, and she swallowed. “I suppose,” she said after a moment pasting on a smile, “they didn’t want to accidentally put up any spoilers.”

The Doctor frowned. He stared at River, then at the cubes. Then he nodded, tweaked his bow tie and strode ahead of her into the curry shop. She gave him an odd look and followed, fairly sure he was concocting some sort of strange plan involving her and her parents.

\-----

“I’m bored,” the Doctor whispered.

Sleepily, River turned onto her side and noticed she’d only been asleep for maybe an hour. “Sweetie, you’ve been bored all night,” she murmured.

“Well, I’m even more bored now.” He punctuated this by fiddling with the hem of her pyjama top. “How can you not be bored?”

“Because I was asleep.”

“I mean before then.”

“Because, unlike you, I know how to slow down. Otherwise, I’d go mad in prison.” In a lot of ways, the day spent at her parents was a lot like a day at Stormcage. Just with more room and easier access to a kettle. Well, legal kettle. She had one hidden under a perception filter in her cell. “Doctor, you’re being silly. I’ve seen you relax before.”

He tugged at the buttons on her pyjamas. “Let’s go to the TARDIS.”

“Sweetie, can it wait until morning?”

He flushed. “River, I’m _bored_.”

She rubbed her eyes and levered herself onto one elbow. She noted the way he was fidgeting and that his trousers had gone tight in certain places. “Doctor, are you trying to tell me you want sex?”

“Ssssh!” He held a finger over her mouth and turned panicked eyes to the wall dividing her room from Amy and Rory’s.

“Sweetie, they’re asleep.”

“They can still hear!”

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that my parents have sex. Frequently. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be existing to even have this conversation with you.”

The Doctor’s cheeks were so red that River was quite sure they were glowing in the dark. “Let’s just go to the TARDIS, dear,” he insisted. “Please.”

Amused, she donned slippers and followed him downstairs. They had relocated the TARDIS into the Ponds’ living room, so they didn’t have to go far. He tugged her toward the doors and spun her around to press her against them, kissing her deeply. It didn’t take long to get into it, to make quick work of his shirt buttons as he peeled off her pyjama top.

He kissed his way down her neck and across the tops of her breasts, one hand sliding into her knickers to rub her through the cloth. “You’re in a hurry,” she managed, her voice hitching as she raised her leg to give him better access.

“I told you, I was bored.” He reached behind her to pull the door open and spun her into the beckoning warmth of the console room. He pushed her against the entryway and shoved her pyjama pants and knickers off. Then he slowly started to kiss his way down her neck again, pausing to take a nipple into his mouth as he slowly slid one long, slim finger into her.

She let out a low moan. Then a strangled gasp.

“What?” The Doctor looked up, flushed.

At a loss for words, River peered over the Doctor’s shoulder. He looked where she did and noticed Brian standing next to the console, sheet white and staring at them like he was witnessing an auto accident. “Brian!” The Doctor squeaked and immediately tried to cover as much of River as he could with his body. But instead, he only wound up tangling his feet in her pyjamas and pitched them both out of the TARDIS, back into the Ponds’ lounge and into the table.

“What’s going on?” Amy called out, as she and Rory clamored down the stairs.

“Ah, nothing, Pond! Nothing at all, just checking the uh … how many cubes we can fit on a table!” The Doctor stammered as Amy and Rory rushed around the corner and froze.

“Right,” Rory said as Brian appeared in TARDIS doorway. He kneaded his temples. “Dad, I thought you went home after dinner.”

“You told me to watch the cubes,” he said, doing his best not to look at the Doctor and River.

“That was 20 hours ago.” Rory pushed his hands through his hair. “Right. We need tea. Lots and lots of tea.”

\-----

“Four days!” The Doctor ranted. He snatched a cube off the coffee table and smacked it. “Not a single change in any cube, anywhere in the world. Four days, and I’m still in your lounge! And I’m _bored_.”

“You said we needed to be patient, sweetie,” River said, flipping through her tablet. She was starting to feel antsy herself and … well … _bored_. Since the Doctor’s aborted attempt at seduction had resulted in a rather nice-sized lump on River’s head from where she smacked into the table leg, along with copious amounts of mortified embarrassment, they hadn’t tried sex again. The Doctor could almost look Brian in the eye.

“Yes, the three of you! Not me! I hate being patient. Come along, River, we’ll leap ahead a few weeks into the future. Quick jaunt first. Restore my sanity.” He tugged her out of her chair. “Monitor the cubes, Pond!”

“Is that your way of saying you’re taking my daughter out into the universe for a shag?”

“Hush, Pond. Give my regards to Brian!”

“Doctor, I think I should stay.”

He paused in mid-tug. “River, they’re not doing anything.”

And she thought of the look he had given her four days earlier, how sad he had been when he’d seen her with her parents. As much as she wanted to travel, as much as she wanted to throw him onto the closest horizontal surface and sate the itchy, crawly desire that had been getting worse, her gut knew the truth. Something had happened to either her or her parents, and her time with them was running out. She needed to stay.

“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.

“Sweetie, why did you ask me to come in the first place?”

And there it was, that flash of grief. He rubbed a thumb over her cheek. “You know, you’re always right, dear.”

“I’d like to think so.”

He leaned in and kissed her. She let herself sink into it, to enjoy that one moment of slow, molten heat. “I’ll be back in a week,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. Then he waved to her parents and disappeared into the TARDIS.

“A month,” Amy predicted.

“Three months,” River corrected.

Amy slipped an arm around her waist. “Are you sure you didn’t want to go? Nothing’s happening with the cubes. I think we’ll be all right.”

“No regrets. Why don’t we go out for dinner with Dad and Brian?”

\-----

_October_

It was nearly three months to the day the cubes arrived.

While the world still puzzled over them, life had returned to normal. To alleviate boredom, and to rack up a few favors for future use, River went to work with UNIT to investigate the cubes. She liked the work, and she liked Kate Stewart, who didn’t have any issues with a part-Time Lord archaeologist on her team. She wanted to use science to discover the truth, and River couldn’t fault her for that.

She took a few breaks of her own: a few side trips and a couple of returns to Stormcage, just to remind them not to let the cell out, and to give Amy and Rory a few evenings alone. She still had quite a bit of her sentence to serve. But the majority of time was spent with Amy and Rory, and she was getting to know Brian better.

Amy had gone out with her friend, Laura, and Rory had the night shift, so River picked up takeaway and headed to Brian’s house.

Brian had moved to London a year after Amy and Rory did, after his wife had died. Leadworth held nothing but too many painful memories, he explained, and that was something River could identify with. He struck her as a lonely man, one who found a new life after inadvertently being introduced to the Doctor. 

“Brian, it’s me,” she called out as she let herself in using the key she borrowed from Rory.

“In the parlour,” he said, and River hauled the bag into the room in time to see Brian setting up a tripod and fixing a camera. He settled on a stool and motioned to the other side. “Check the focus.”

He sat back and faced the camera as she made the adjustments before giving him the go-ahead to speak. “Brian's log. Day 67. Cube was quiet all night, once again. Cube was quiet all day. As per previously, no movement, no change in measurements. End of entry.”

“Please tell me you don’t watch it all the time,” River said as she switched off the camera.

Brian flushed. “I learned my lesson there. I film it while I'm asleep. When I wake up, I watch the footage on fast-forward. I email the result to UNIT. My middle name is diligence.”

River smiled and unknotted the plastic bags holding their meals.

“Now, don’t humor my log. I’m doing what the Doctor asked. Thank you,” he said, accepting a Styrofoam container and waving her to the seat next to him. “Golf?”

“That would be lovely.” And about the only thing Brian would watch other than the news and his growing fascination for sci-fi television. He quizzed her on whether something was true or not, and while not as verbose as the Doctor, River found that she was happy to discuss the wild inaccuracies of terrestrial television with her grandfather.

“I’ve been doing some thinking lately,” he informed her as he scooped up fried rice.

“Oh?”

Brian took a bite and set his food aside. He took a thick album off the table, one River recognized as having Rory’s school pictures. He carefully flipped through it until he came to an image of Amy and Rory together at their wedding. Then, he tapped on the background. “Something about you has been bugging me since the day you arrived. That’s you, isn’t it?”

River leaned over and inwardly cursed. Yes, there she was, dressed in black and outside the window at Amy and Rory’s wedding. “I explained how things work with the Doctor,” she said. “That hasn’t happened for me yet. But, it will, some day.”

“You and the Doctor been married awhile, yes?”

“Quite a long time.” River set aside her food, no longer hungry.

“Why aren’t you with him? Why are you still in Amy and Rory’s spare room?” He tilted his head. “They’ve got clothes for you. I didn’t realize that until recently. I take care of the place while they’re away with the Doctor. Noticed the clothes in the bureau and wardrobe. They’re not Amy’s.”

“Brian, it’s really not my place to tell you this …”

“I just want you to know that I like you. I accept you and the relationship you have with my son and daughter-in-law.” Brian patted her knee. “It’s unconventional, but I want them to be happy.”

River’s mouth opened and closed, and her brain went _there_. “Brian, what sort of relationship do you think I have with Amy and Rory?”

“One of those _ménage-a-trois_ ones, of course!” Brian beamed as he got the pronunciation right.  “Though I do hope the Doctor is aware that you’re cheating on him. It’s in your best interest to be honest with him, and why are you laughing?”

She couldn’t help it. She broke into peals of laughter, collapsing into the cushions and covering her face with her hands. “Oh, I wish it was that simple,” River choked out and made her decision. She couldn’t leave Brian like this. Not now. “Brian, do you remember Mels Zucker?”

“She’s a hard one to forget.”

“I’m Mels.” She smiled at his confused expression. “I’m part-Time Lord, like the Doctor. When a Time Lord is gravely wounded, they regenerate. That’s what happened to me. I was wounded in Berlin, 1938, and I regenerated.”

“From a black woman to a white one?”

“Oh, yes. Regenerations can go all sorts of ways. There’s even one Time Lord who was known for changing from a man to a woman.” And here came the hard part. “But, before I was Mels, I was someone else, Brian. I’m part-Time Lord because my parents are human, and I was conceived in the vortex. When I was a baby, I was taken away from my parents and experimented on. I didn’t see them again until I was Mels.”

Brian didn’t say anything. As the silence stretched, River wondered if she needed to call Rory and have him swing by once he got off shift. Instead, he hunched forward and pressed his hands to his eyes.

“Ten years ago,” he said, “not long before Amy and Rory moved to London, I remembered that they had gone on a trip. Meeting a friend in Utah, they said. They came back, and I remember they were so sad. They tried to hide it, but you know, we’re parents. We _know_. We all talked about it, Marissa and I, Tabetha and Augustus. We thought she had a miscarriage and didn’t want to tell anyone. That’s Amy.” He dropped his hands and that piercing gaze, so like Rory’s, met hers. “But she didn’t miscarry, did she?”

“No,” River confirmed. “She gave birth to a healthy baby girl.”

“And that was you?”

She nodded.

“You mean all this time I was on them for about adopting a kid, you were there?”

“It’s complicated.” Near tears herself, River decided it was high time they break out the wine. “Do you want a drink?” she asked, getting to her feet with the sudden urge to do _something_.

“What did she call you? As a baby before you were kidnapped?”

“Melody. Williams, though I went by Pond. Everyone called me Melody Pond.” She went into the kitchen and found the wine glasses and the wine. She poured out two large glasses and carried one back to Brian.

“Why didn’t they tell me?” She heard the hurt in his voice, and her hearts ached.

“I can’t tell you that, Bri-“

“Grandad,” he cut in, fiercely. “You call me Grandad.”

For a moment, she couldn’t speak, and she was deathly afraid of weeping. She hadn’t known until that second how much she craved for her family to _know_ her. “OK, Grandad.”

\-----

“Hello, dear.”

Pleasantly buzzed from the wine she shared with Brian, River was nearly back to her parents’ when the familiar voice came from the park across the street. She spun, smiled. “Hello, sweetie.”

The Doctor emerged from the shadows, dressed in his tux. He angled his hat jauntily and strode toward her, twirling his cane. “And where have you been, my bad, bad, girl?”

“Having dinner with my grandfather.” When he was close enough, she pulled him to her. “But, I think I’m ready for dessert.”

“And here, I was hoping we’d go dancing, wife.”

“Oh, I have no objection to _dancing_ , husband.”

With a grin, he swept her into a waltz and promenaded her around the vacant street, still dotted with cubes. For all of his natural clumsiness, dancing was something that came easily, and one of the things she loved best about him. The lights around them spun as he turned her in circles, and by and by, she became more drunk from him than the wine. She loved _life_. Despite the cubes, her parents were happy and the last three months with them had been wonderful. Her grandfather knew the truth about her. And her husband was gazing at her as if he had found all the answers in the universe in her eyes.

He led the dance into the park and the waiting open door of the TARDIS. He snapped his fingers, and the door swung shut behind him before he laid his lips on hers.

They left a trail of clothes from the console room up the stairs to their room, which was helpfully relocated to be the first one they reached. They were greedy, greedy, greedy, with enough time apart to give the sex a desperate edge. She was surprised they even made it to the bed, but just barely before the ache became too much, and she was desperate for him.

She pushed him onto the bed, then scrambled over his hips and lowered herself onto him. His eyes darkened before fluttering shut, exposing veins in his neck as he arched beneath her and groaned. She loved this position, loved watching the look on his face as she rolled her hips and took him as deep as possible. She kept a slow, steady pace, deliberately driving them both mad before he toppled her over and drove both of them to completion.

They lay next to each other catching their breath, and River felt much, much better. “How long has it been for you?” she asked when she managed to find her voice again.

“Since I was here, or when we last had sex?”

She chuckled at that.

“I just took one trip. Maybe two. Maybe seven, but I didn’t run into you on any of them, dear. How long has it been?”

“Three months.”

The Doctor peered at her. “Three months? And you haven’t gone mad?”

“Sweetie, it’s been a nice break. I went back to Stormcage a few times … and maybe had a go at that Pxyran library I’ve always wanted to see.”

“That’s my girl.” He tapped her nose. “I was worried there for a sec. Wondering if all that Pond domesticity has rubbed off on you. I’d have to stage an intervention.”

“Only you would stage an intervention from everyday life, my love.” River rolled onto her side and trailed a finger down his chest. “I’ve been helping UNIT. Making sure that my younger self has an easy time of it when she interviews Kate Stewart in about 12 years for her thesis.”

He made a noncommittal sound and twined a curl around his finger. “Kept the TARDIS monitoring all the newsfeeds. Nothing from the cubes, I take it?”

“Nothing other than people accusing Banksy of being behind it.”

They slept, the Doctor worn out to the point where he even slept for several hours before waking her up. He insisted he was bored again, and she had no issues helping him to alleviate said _boredom_.

“Come to breakfast,” she invited as they stepped out of the TARDIS just as dawn broke. “Amy and Rory would love to see you.”

“Come with me after.” He tugged her back to his side and kissed her nose. “We’ll check in on the Ponds again in a few months.

“I can’t, my love.” She straightened his bow tie. “Not at this second. Brian found out who I am last night.”

 “As in who you are to Amy and Rory?”

River chuckled. “He seriously thought I was in a three-way relationship with them. That’s more than just a little odd. I had to tell him after that. I don’t know how they’re going to take it.”

The Doctor took her hand and squeezed. “River, why don’t Amy and Rory talk about you?” he asked quietly. “Why are there no pictures of you?”

“You asked me this three months ago. I don’t know.” She squeezed it back. “I never asked. Doctor, I’m not a little girl anymore. I don’t need to seek mummy and daddy’s approval.”

“Yes, you do. All children seek their parents’ approval. Why haven’t you asked?”

Her breath caught, and she swallowed past the lump that formed in her throat. “I’m not afraid of much,” she replied. “But, I am afraid of their answer to that question.”

“Do you think they don’t want you? Will reject you if you asked to be recognized? River, this is Amy and Rory-”

“Who aren’t perfect. If anyone knows that, I do. My mother keeps her emotions to herself, and my father has an inferiority complex the size of the moon. They are good people, Doctor, and I love them very much. I’m just not sure they love me as much as I love them.”

“That’s not true.”

Startled, River turned to see Rory several feet away. His hair was tousled, and he still wore his scrubs, now rumpled and a bit dirty from his long shift. His eyes were ancient and tired, and he looked like he’d been punched in the stomach. “Rory …”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “River, we love you. Amy and I. We really do.”

“You love Melody,” River said gently. “The daughter you lost.”

“Who happens to be you, standing in front of me now.”

“Then, why are there no pictures of me in the house? It’s been nine years. Why didn’t you tell Brian who I am?”

Rory blinked, at a loss for words. “I think we really should talk with Amy about this.”

“No, Rory. Brian is your father, and you helped make that decision. Tell me why.”

Rory stared at the Doctor helplessly. “Doctor …”

“You owe her an answer, Rory,” the Doctor said quietly. “She is your daughter. If you’re so proud of that, then why are there more pictures of me in that house than of her?”

Rory didn’t say anything. In the house next door, a television flipped on and the chatter from the BBC morning news drifted out the open window. At the end of the block, a couple of children scrambled down the stairs and raced across the street to the park.

River closed her eyes and turned away. “Doctor, I’m ready to leave now.”

“River, wait,” Rory pleaded.

She ignored him. She marched toward the TARDIS, belatedly realizing that her vortex manipulator and tablet were in the spare room upstairs. But she kept going until she was in the console room, and the TARDIS hummed around her child as if to soothe her. She placed a hand on one of the levers and realized that it was shaking. She fisted it and tried to control the emotions that were struggling to break free.

_Be brave … be brave … be brave …_

The door softly opened and closed, and the Doctor stepped up to the console. He laid his hands on her shoulders. With a muffled sob, she turned to him and let him hold her until the shaking stopped.


	2. Encore

_December_

“Doctor, where are you?”

“Oh, somewhere in the year 9122, suspended over a tar pit. An acid tar pit, I should bring you and Rory here some time when we’re not about to die.” The Doctor stretched the phone over to the door and peered out.

“Is River still with you?”

“Of course she’s still with me! She’s actually the one out negotiating with the tribesmen right now.” He squinted. “No, make that flirting. Well, she calls it negotiating, I call it flirting. Oh, and now she’s putting on the lipstick. We’ll get out of here one way or another.”

From her end of the line, Amy paced the lounge. “Doctor, why don’t the two of you pop by? It’s Christmas. You two haven’t missed a Christmas with us since you told us you were alive.”

“Christmas! Is it that soon? Are the cubes still there?”

“Yes.” Amy picked up the cube on the coffee table and absently inspected it. “More than five months now and still nothing. Look, Doctor, we’d really like you and River to come to dinner.” She put the cube down and bit her lip. “Is she all right?”

“What do you think, Pond? Whoa! All right, one rope cut. But there’s three ropes still holding us up, so that’s a good thing! Think positive.”

“We had a long talk. Me, Rory, and Brian. I’m going to tell my parents about her. Brian’s right, we should have told them about River as soon as we came back from Demon’s Run.” Amy pushed a hand through her hair. “It’s just all so … it doesn’t make sense. My baby was kidnapped, but then she’s older than I am, and then she’s married to you. And then she’s Mels, and then she’s not. You know, we were so worried about what everyone else would think that we didn’t think about what _she_ needs. She’s our daughter, you know? And there’s nine years now with her grandparents that she can’t get back.”

“Then that’s exactly what you should be telling her, Amy. Not me, her. Oh, there goes another rope. River!” the Doctor shouted out the door and returned to the conversation. “Look, I’ll bring her by soon. Well, soon-ish. As soon as I can. Provided  I don’t fall into a vat of acid and regenerate. Already had a close call with _that_ one. Talk to you soon, give my best to Rory!”

\-----

_March_

“Brian’s log, Day 232. No movement, no change in measurement.” Brian reached forward to turn off the camera, then reconsidered. “Actually, if I could ask a favor? You lot with UNIT, you know how to reach the Doctor. Well, today’s my granddaughter’s birthday. Could you get her a message, tell her that her old grandad wishes her a happy birthday? He misses getting takeaway with her. Thanks.”

Brian flipped the camera and rubbed his hand over his eyes before getting to his feet to turn on the morning news.

\------

“March?” River glared at the Doctor as she stared at the date on the bottom of the TV as they waited in line to pick up breakfast for the Ponds. “Sweetie, I told you to let me drive! We were supposed to be gone five days, not five months!”

“Must have accidentally pulled the left lever next to the typewriter,” he muttered, not at all bothered by this.

“You left my parents to deal with this for five months!” She waved a hand, indicating the cubes that had now become as much of the landscape as the Internet and smartphones. The café they were at was using them to hold up the display trays of cakes and pies. At the tables, they held flower arrangements and napkin holders.

“Well, it doesn’t look like anything they couldn’t handle, and besides, things were fine in December.”

“December? When did you talk to them?”

“Oh, forgot to tell you, you’ve a message from Amy. Wants you to pop around for a visit when you can, and here we are. Sorry, it was when we were in the acid pit.” He frowned. “You’re not going to slap me, are you?”

River took the bag of pastries from the shop attendant, murmured a thank you and shot her husband a death glare. “I hate you.”

“No, she doesn’t,” the Doctor cheerfully informed the confused attendant. “Well, you that is. She might hate me at the moment, but she really doesn’t either.”

River ignored him and strode out to the street. The Doctor nicked two samples from the tray next to the register and followed.

“I love free samples,” he said as he caught up. “Especially free samples in little shops, they’re the best.” He held one out as a peace offering. “Look, dear, I got you one.”

She sighed and accepted the pastry from him.

“See? You don’t hate me.” Pleased that all was good with his world, the Doctor tapped her nose and tugged at his braces.

The cubes hadn’t changed in the five months they were gone. A good many of them were relegated to trash cans and recycle bins, although one apparently was running a successful campaign to become MP of Flydale South. As they turned the corner toward the Ponds, they spotted Amy and Rory in their dressing gowns waiting on the stoop of the TARDIS.

Rory spotted them first, nudged Amy in the side, and they flew down the block.

“Oh, thank God,” Amy cried. She threw her arms around River and hugged her tightly. “You’re OK. You had us worried sick.” Then she turned to the Doctor and smacked his arm.

“Ow, Pond!”

“ _Five months_ , Raggedy Man! Do you realize how many answerphone messages I left for you?”

“I brought her back in one piece, didn’t I?”

“Oh, that was never the point!” Amy turned her back on him. “He’s an idiot.”

“Yes, he is,” River agreed, giving the Doctor a fond smile.

“And we’ve actually seen you since. Once, at Christmas. Spoilers, I know, but it wasn’t this you. So, we got the right you now? The one that left in October? Future you said we’d see this you again in a few months.”

“Amy, Mrs. Teasdale is watching,” Rory muttered.

Amy snorted. “Let her watch. Nosy bat. Moved in three months ago, insists the cubes are the mole men. God, if she sees the TARDIS, she’d send for UNIT. Good thing they already know about you. Regardless, Rory’s right. And you brought breakfast. Splendid! We better talk inside.”

River noticed the changes as soon as she walked in the door. They were subtle, but drew the eye. Several old photos she hadn’t seen in years were added to the collages on the wall, the grouping of frames on the mantle. They were all of Amy and Rory with Mels. Amy had had dozens of the photos plastered on her bedroom wall growing up, and there had been a few in their old Leadworth flat. But none in the new place, in the post-Demon's Run phase of their lives.

She didn’t say a word, but she felt the Doctor’s elbow dig into her side. He wiggled his eyebrows when she finally acknowledged him. He’d seen them too.

Amy caught them looking. “Do you realize how many trashy half-drunk photos we took?”

“Yes, I was there.” River wandered to the mantle and took down the image of them in a school play when she was 9…ish. “I remember that one. First alien encounter happened during that play, at least that I remember. They were trying to change things even then.”

“We don’t have any of you,” Rory admitted. “ _You_ , you. A few mobile phone shots Amy took on the TARDIS, but those didn’t turn out. We asked you, sorry other you, about them at Christmas, but you said just said spoilers and that we’d get them soon enough.”

“She does that,” the Doctor muttered.

River put the image back and faced her parents. They stood in front of the sofa clasping hands, Amy and Rory, a unit as always. She wondered if they had any idea they’d been doing this for years, presenting themselves as a united front even when they had been small and Amy was lecturing Mels about not getting into trouble and to please try to last at least a week before getting sent to the head teacher’s office.

“We’re sorry,” Rory began. He bit his lip. “I’m really not good at this. We’ve been rehearsing.”

“Oh, sod it.” Amy stepped forward and took River’s hands. “River, you’re our daughter. Even when I held that gun on you at Demon’s Run, I _knew_ , somewhere deep inside. It all seemed like a dream, you know? There aren’t even any stretch marks. But, you’re Melody. You’re ours. And if we can explain the Doctor in our lives, then we can explain you. It just didn’t make sense.”

“If it has to do with the Doctor, sense has little to do with anything.”

The Doctor glared at River, sniffed, and started poking through the breakfast bag.

“You’ve always taken care of me. Some of it hasn’t happened for you yet, but it will. You will take care of me, of Rory. I’m never going to see my baby again.” Amy’s voice hitched. “Madame Kovarian took that away from me. I will never hold my baby or see her take her first steps or speak her first words. And I know you tried when you were Mels, but it will never be the same.”

“It was easier to relegate that to Doctor life. Amy, I understand-”

“You deserve better,” Rory spoke up. “You’re right in what you said, River, back in October. For a long time, when I looked at you, I didn’t see our daughter. I just saw the woman who refused to help me save Amy at Demon's Run.”

“Which was stupid,” Amy said with a smack to Rory’s arm, “because she was being a good girl. River has always been a good girl.”

The Doctor gave a little snort in the background.

“Dad was pretty angry with us,” Rory said wearily and sat on the sofa. “We told him everything, the day you left. He came over looking for answers. I told him what happened at Demon’s Run, and he said it didn’t make a difference. And I do love you, I do. I was so proud when I rescued you, when the Doctor and Amy and I all stood around you and you mocked his bow tie. Well supposedly. The Doctor claims to speak baby.”

“He claims to speak a lot of things,” River agreed.

The Doctor muttered under his breath, adjusted his bow tie, and opened the pastry box.

“We told my parents over Christmas.” Amy rolled her eyes. “You can imagine that they were just a bit skeptical.”

Rory snorted.

“But Brian being there, having spent all that time with you, helped convince them. They want to meet you. Both of you, and stop that.” Amy reached over and smacked the Doctor’s hands before he could help himself to the sole jelly doughnut in the box. “We were always trying to separate Doctor life from real life, but you know what? It’s not separate. It’s just life. We want to be better parents to you. If you’ll let us.”

Amy sank onto the sofa next to Rory, and he covered her hands with his. Behind them, the Doctor was defiantly poking holes in the jelly doughnut, licking the jelly off his finger, and shooting River knowing looks. She bit her lip, not quite sure how to respond. It was easier when she was on a mission, trying to get information out of someone, flirting with the Doctor.

“There isn’t a lot I value in the universe,” River began, voice trembling slightly. She tried to force the emotion out of her voice and failed. “Three things, actually. The first is the Doctor. Always. The second is my career. It’s what I chose to do, who I made myself to be. But the third is the two of you. You’re my family. If I had never had you, who knows what I would be like now.  You taught me how to love, how to care for people. You stood by me when I broke time, and …”

“Oh, Ponds, just hug and make up,” the Doctor ordered with a wave of his jelly-covered hand as he poked through the pastry box with his other hand. “River, you’ll be a good daughter, and Ponds, you’ll be good parents. Now hug. Ponds hug. Been too long without a proper Pond hug in the house.”

“Do you have a Pond hug quota?” Amy asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

And they hugged, a massive three-way hug that spoke a lot more than words did. Then they stole the pastry box from the Doctor.

\-----

Brian brought a small birthday cake from the bakery and presented it to River with pride. He also brought his camera and ordered everyone into the back garden for photos.

“Dad, there’s still snow out there,” Rory said as he pulled on his jacket. “Can’t we wait a month or so and get some nicer photos?”

“No. I’m not risking the Doctor taking my granddaughter off who knows where before I can get any pictures, since you wouldn’t let me at Christmas.”

“River was the one wouldn’t let us at Christmas, and she explained why.”

“Hmph.” Brian ignored him and walked outside.

Rory sighed. “He’s been like this since October when it comes to her.”

“That’s because she’s his granddaughter, and he’s still mad at you.” Amy grabbed her scarf.

“It’s been five months.”

“It’s been nearly ten years.” Amy tugged Rory to her and began to do up the buttons of his coat.

“He doesn’t treat you this way either,” Rory muttered.

“That’s because Brian likes me.” She kissed the corner of Rory’s mouth. “Besides, I’ve my own parents to deal with regarding this. Rory, if we’ve learned anything traveling with the Doctor, it’s that things have consequences. This,” she gestured to Brian talking with the Doctor and River, “is ours.”

Rory sighed and remembered that the entire time his father ignored him while they shot photos.

\-----

“Do you want us to stay?”

It was just the four of them again. Brian had gone home to film his latest log -- “I’m building quite a following on that Tumblr place,” he called as he left – and they were enjoying the last of the ice cream. Well, the Doctor was. Amy, Rory, and River had swapped on their sweets for wine. The afternoon had been filled with general chatter about the cubes until River decided to circle back to the white elephant in the room.

Amy looked at River as if she’d mutated into a Dalek. “You’re our family, of course you’re staying.”

“Mother, I saw how Bri … Grandad was treating Dad.”

“Well, that won’t get any better if you don’t stick around,” Rory said, staring into his wine glass.

“You can’t just keep River here to keep your dad happy. Besides, she has a life, too.”

“We are supposed to be keeping an eye on the cubes.” River picked up the cube left on the coffee table and examined it. “Nothing we’ve come across in the last few days for us has led me to believe these are anything threatening.”

“Which is why we keep watching them,” the Doctor insisted, taking the cube from her.

“No offense, Raggedy Man, but if UNIT hasn’t found anything with them, nor the two of you, I think there’s not much of an issue.”

“They can’t be destroyed,” the Doctor pointed out, gesturing to the TV. On screen, there was a news report on several ways the government was trying to get rid of the cubes but couldn’t break them down. “They don’t appear to be biodegradable or can be unassembled. So, why are they here?”

“Maybe,” Rory said, “someone decided to throw them away, and the Earth was their idea of a rubbish bin.”

“Well, you lot are doing that part splendidly without alien interference,” the Doctor muttered.

“You two go have some fun,” Amy urged. “Pop back by in a couple more months. Get back by May, and you can help me plan our anniversary party. I was thinking of doing a cookout here. We’re celebrating our 11th anniversary, it’ll be a good time for that. I think we’re pretty partial to the number 11.” She winked at the Doctor.

\-----

_June_

“When are they supposed to arrive?”

“Any time, Mum.”

“I want to meet this daughter of yours.” Tabetha Pond pulled potato salad out of the fridge and frowned at her daughter. “It’s not fair that Brian’s gotten to see her all this time, and your father and I have never even met her.”

“Mother, I told you, River was Mels. Mels practically lived at our place growing up.” Amy sighed and wondered how soon she could start spiking the punch.

Tabetha gave a little sniff. “Mels was a delinquent. She,” she waved at the mantel, “looks nothing like Mels.”

Amy’s gaze flitted to the mantle, where the photos Brian had taken in March were displayed. Despite the cold, they were good shots of all four of them and one with Brian included after he managed to get the timer right.

“She has a doctorate in archaeology. A _doctorate_.” Tabetha pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “You gave birth to a brilliant woman, if Brian tells me correctly, and I could never see Mels even finishing school much less becoming a respected archaeologist.”

Amy gave up. By tactful omission, River, Amy, and Rory had decided not to tell the grandparents that River was actually in prison serving time as a cover-up to mask the Doctor’s supposed death. Amy had told her parents most of the truth. She was pregnant, traveled with the Doctor, gave birth in the 51st century, and Melody was kidnapped. Melody was brought into the past, raised as Mels. After regeneration, River had decided to pursue her degree in the future.

And, every so often, Tabetha muttered about why her grandchild couldn’t have grown up properly in the 21st century.

Amy shook her head, shooed her mother out of the kitchen, and grabbed her mobile.

“Hey! Doctor, it's me. Hello. You were supposed to have my daughter back here a month ago, if she’s still with you. Which I assume so, because she has a much better sense of time than you.” Amy sighed and glanced out the window at where her father, Brian, and Rory were gathered around the grill. “So, the U.N. classified the cubes as ‘provisionally safe,’ whatever that means, and Banksy and Damien Hirst put out a statement saying the cubes are nothing to do with them. And the cubes?” She poked at one sitting on the counter. “Well, they're just here, still. What's it been, nine months? People are just taking them for granted. Maybe we'll never know why they came. Being as it's our wedding anniversary, we hoped you two might drop. I left you messages.”

“I know!”

Amy spun to find the Doctor holding a ridiculously large bouquet of flowers. He dumped them in her arms. “Happy anniversary!”

“Thanks?” Amy quirked an eyebrow. “Where’s River?”

“What? No, hello, Doctor? No, I haven’t seen you in a few months, isn’t that a smashing bow tie you’re wearing?”

“Doctor!”

“Relax, Amelia Pond, your daughter is out back.” The Doctor turned Amy around to see that River was speaking with Tabetha by the grill. “Sorry we were a little late. Got a bit tied up. Literally.”

“Doctor …”

“Now, grab your husband and follow me.”

“Doctor, we can’t just leave!” Amy put the flowers on the counter and followed the Doctor into the garden. “We’ve a garden full of guests, including our parents!”

“Oh, I’ll have you back before the party’s over. They’ll all think you’ve gone to have a good snog, and they’ll never miss you. Rory!” The Doctor clapped Rory’s shoulder. “Come along, I’ve got a gift for you two.”

Rory indicated the burgers he was manning. “I’m a bit busy here, Doctor.”

“Doctor, we have an obligation to our guests. Tell him, River!” Amy spun to her.

“Well?” The Doctor grinned at his wife.

“You’re seriously asking me to choose between my mother and my husband?”

“Yes!” The Doctor and Amy said at the same time.

River arched an eyebrow and turned to Tabetha. She slid an arm around the Doctor’s waist. “Tabetha,” she said smoothly, “this is the Doctor. My husband.”

Tabetha’s eyes widened, then she jabbed a finger in the Doctor’s face. “ _You!_ ”

The Doctor tried to bolt, and River only tightened her hold on him.

“You’re the one who took my daughter off God knows where! Do you know much you’ve cost us in therapy?”

“We’re very happy together,” River cooed in a syrupy voice.

“That makes one of us,” the Doctor muttered and kept trying to worm away.

“Now you listen here, young man, I’ve got some things to tell you.”

“Look, I’m really not that young, and I have to be going to-”

Tabetha pointed to the closest chair. “ _Sit!”_

The Doctor sat. “Help me,” he mouthed to River. She blew him a kiss, gave him a tiny wave and looped her arm through Amy’s.

“Now, that’s just cold,” Amy said as they walked away to say hello to Brian.

“I know.”

Amy grinned. “You are so my daughter.”

“I _know_.” River winked, and they got out of Tabetha’s earshot as quickly as possible.

It really was a wonderful party. River recognized many of the people from when she stayed with the Ponds the previous fall. To her surprise, Kate Stewart stopped by to offer her congratulations and to deliver the latest news.

“We’re officially going to cancel the project after a year, turn our focus on safe cube disposal,” she told Amy, Rory, and River. She peered over them at the Doctor, who was still being scolded by Tabetha. “Is he OK?”

“It’s my mother,” Amy explained.

Kate tut-tutted. “I know at times growing up, the Doctor wasn’t the most favorite person in our household either. My mother never could quite understand what my father was doing with him. As for me, I was jealous. I’m glad I’ve had a chance to get to know him now.”

The Doctor managed to get away just after Kate left. He jabbed a finger into River’s face. “ _This_ is why I don’t deal with families,” he hissed. “I’d rather be slapped by Jackie Tyler than go through that again.”

“Oh, poor sweetie. Did it hurt?”

The Doctor ignored River and stomped off to get cake.

By 1 a.m., everyone had cleared out. The four sat around the same table where Amy had sat years earlier with a bottle of wine, waiting for her daughter to tell her the news that the Doctor was alive.

“You know,” the Doctor said, “we can always do my gift now.”

“Maybe in the morning. We’re knackered. I mean, really knackered, so don’t give me that knowing look.” That one Amy directed at River.

The Doctor fiddled with a cube. “I was wondering. Could I … well, we I suppose … could we stay with you? And Rory. Just for a bit. Well, until the year is up. I heard Kate telling you. Keep an eye on the cubes.”

“You went a little mad the last time that happened,” Rory pointed out.

“No. No, no, no, it’s just … I’ll be better at it this time. I will,” the Doctor insisted as Amy and River gave him matching eyebrow raises. “I … miss you. All three of you.”

As Amy and Rory gave their reassurances, River’s stomach knotted again. Just like all those months ago, on the day the cubes first arrived. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong. Since Utah the first time for him, he hadn’t been shy about seeking her out. Or her parents once he knew that they knew he wasn’t dead. But this was something other than that, a little more desperate. For her and the Doctor, they had been together for about a month since she left with him in October, and they normally never spent that long together.

He hadn’t asked her where she was in her diary. Not once.

Because he already knew.

\-----

_July_

The Doctor wedged himself between Amy and Rory with a large bowl of custard in his lap. Amy and Rory held plates of fish sticks. All three shared the bowl, with the Doctor alternating between Amy and Rory’s plate when he grabbed his share. Over the television, Lord Sugar berated his apprentice-wanna-bes in a time-honored fashion.

“I sent you out to sell as many cubes as you could in 24 hours and look at you, you've made a right hash of it, haven't you? Well, Craig, you're fired,” he barked.

The Doctor took a messy bite, the custard dribbling down his chin. “If I had a restaurant, this’d be all I’d serve.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. You running a restaurant.”

“I’ve run restaurants,” the Doctor protested. “Who do you think invented the Yorkshire pudding?”

“You didn’t,” Rory said.

“Pudding, yet savory. Sound familiar?” The Doctor craned his head. “River, I’m eating your share.”

At the table, River sat with her tablet and diary, scribbling in a notebook. She gave them an absent wave. “Go ahead, sweetie, I’m not hungry.”

Happily, the Doctor started in on River’s share. Amy tossed her own puzzled look at her daughter. “You sure? You barely touched your lunch earlier.”

River gave her a distracted smile. “I’m OK, Mum.”

Amy gave her a disbelieving stare, but she turned back to her own supper.

River sighed and kneaded her temples. They had been with her parents for three weeks. Her suspicions started to rise some time during the second week. Something was off. Seriously off. She _knew_ time. She knew herself and the Doctor. She fiddled with the pen and wondered how to approach the subject with him. She’d have to be direct. It was the only way to handle it.

The program ended, and Amy yawned. “I’m going for a bath,” she said and kissed Rory’s cheek. She tousled the Doctor’s hair and carried the dishes into the kitchen. She placed them in the sink, then crossed over to River, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re OK?” she murmured.

“I’m fine. I just need to have a talk with the Doctor.”

“Oh?” Amy glanced at River’s tea, the scribbled dates, then her eyes went wide. Her gaze dropped to River’s abdomen, then back to her face. “Are you …?”

“Am I?”

Amy looked pointedly at River’s abdomen again.

“Oh!” River laughed. “No, no, it’s not that! Believe me, I’m not pregnant.”

“Oh.” Amy sounded disappointed. She kissed the top of River’s head. “You’ll tell me then?”

“Later.” Maybe. Probably not. River watched her mother walk up the stairs and rested a hand on her stomach. Pregnancy would be far easier to deal with than this. It was time to tell the Doctor what she discovered. She bade good night to Rory and left him and the Doctor playing on the Wii.

It took two hours. River laid in bed and listened to Rory and the Doctor play a game, then Rory come upstairs and shuffle into the loo, then into her parents’ room.

“Is River asleep?” she heard him ask.

“Awhile back. She looked knackered,” Amy replied. “I hope she’s OK. She says she’s not pregnant, but I don’t believe her.”

“She probably wants to tell the Doctor first if she is.”

“Maybe you should talk to her?”

“In the morning. Right now, I really don’t want to focus on becoming a grandparent.”

River shook her head and quietly slipped from the bed, gathering her dressing gown. Amy and Rory were well on their way to becoming _preoccupied_ , and she had no desire to hear that. She slipped downstairs. As soon as she hit the bottom of the landing, her suspicions were confirmed. She folded her arms over her chest and waited.

It took five minutes, but the TARDIS faded back into view – the brakes off. He was at least cagey enough to remember that. A second later, the Doctor popped out of the TARDIS. He patted the side, closed the door, spun and nearly ran over River. He leaped back with a yelp, finding his escape route blocked by the TARDIS. “Oh, hello, dear!”

“And, what sort of time do you call this?” River winged an eyebrow.

“Had to take her for a spin. Was just in the vortex for a couple seconds. Never even knew I was missing.”

River narrowed her eyes. “Doctor, you’re wearing a different shirt and bow tie from when I saw you a couple hours ago.”

“I got custard on this shirt.” The Doctor bussed her cheek and tried to dance around her.

“I see.”

“Good. Now, let’s go-”

“So,” River cut in, “how’s Clara?”

There it was. In his eyes, just a split second. The way his breath hitched and he hesitated before smiling. She knew that smile very well. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, dear.”

“Yes, you do. Doctor, you just lied to me. _I know you_. I know all your tells. We’ve been married far too long for me not to.”

“River, I am not ly-“

“Yes, you are!” she snapped. She grabbed his wrist, her fingers pressing into his pulse. “Your heart rate is double what it should be, and you’re staring at my chin, not at me. You seriously didn’t think I wouldn’t notice that you’re slipping out in the TARDIS at night? I’m sure Amy and Rory caught on, but they think it’s just your way of trying not to go mad with boredom. But, that’s not it, is it?”

“River-”

“I have spent the past 10 days trying to piece this all together. None of this makes sense. You don’t need my help with these cubes. You’ve all but shoved me on my parents. You never asked me where I was in my diary. No spoiler warnings. You knew exactly which version of me you sent for a year ago. I didn’t catch on before, but it’s obvious once I started figuring it out. You’re rewriting time. Why?”

“River, please. Sp-”

“Don’t you _dare_ fall back on that! Don’t you just brush it off. You owe me an explanation. What are you rewriting, Doctor?” She grabbed his arm and dug in, tight. “If you dare try to evade this, I swear I am going upstairs and telling my parents everything.”

“Doctor?”

Behind the Doctor, the door had opened and the tiny figure of Clara Oswin Oswald stood just inside the console room. The _changed_ console room, River realized as she peered over the younger girl's shoulder. Clara flicked her gaze about the room before settling on River. “River?”

“Clara!” The Doctor tried to scramble back. “No, no, go back in the TARDIS. You’re supposed to be sleeping!”

“Not bloody likely!” Clara stepped into the Ponds’ lounge. “You’ve been acting really weird the past few weeks. I was thinking you were off doing something when I was asleep. Never imagined it was this. Embarrassed to bring me home to the wife because you caught me snogging her in that wardrobe?”

River smirked. _That_ she remembered.

The Doctor went red and tried to make his escape. But Clara grabbed his other arm.

“Clara, dear,” River said, “how long has the Doctor been acting _off_ to you?”

“Ever since we had an encounter with these things called the Whispermen.”

And it all fell into place. The Doctor’s strange behavior, and why he was so insistent on River spending time with her parents. Why he was rewriting time. She knew of the Whispermen, of what they could do to your psyche.  “Clara, dear, I need to have a row with the Doctor. Do you mind waiting out here?”

“No, not at all.” Clara let go of the Doctor and plopped on the sofa. “What year is this?”

“July 2021.”

“Oh, interesting.” She picked up a cube and frowned. “What are these?”

“Just watch them,” River said. “And if you hear someone coming downstairs, just introduce yourself. But please don’t say anything if you recognize their names. I don’t want to fragment things any more than they are.”

Clara’s sharp gaze had already taken in the photos on the mantle. She sat up straight as it hit her. “Is this the Ponds? Like Amy and Rory? Didn’t they-“

“Spoilers!” The Doctor and River yelled together, and Clara snapped her mouth shut.

“Sorry, sorry. Well, off you two, go have your row.” Clara frowned at the cube. “I’m not supposed to be here, am I?”

“It’s complicated,” River explained and tugged the Doctor into the TARDIS. As soon as the door closed behind her, every other door out of the console room swung shut, the loud sound of the locks engaging echoing through the room. Even the stairs leading under the console were blocked off. 

River strode into the middle of the console room and whirled around, ready to lay into the Doctor. She opened her mouth, then snapped it back shut. He hadn’t moved from his spot near the door. He merely leaned against it, eyes hooded and looking very much like the weary old man he was beneath the youthful façade. She swallowed and tried to hold onto her anger, but it slipped away.

“For 361 days, between July 2020 and July 2021, monitoring devices known as cubes were sent to Earth,” the Doctor said tonelessly. “They were sent by the Shakri, who were trying to exterminate humankind by luring them into a false sense of security, then using the cubes to turn off people’s hearts. I spent that year with your parents and Brian in the original timeline.”

River began filling in the pieces. “But, no me.”

“Not even once. No mention of you from them or me. No sign you even existed in their world, not even as their old friend Mels.” The Doctor pushed off the door and wandered to the console. He absently twisted the dial. “I was just as much of a part of it as they were. Out of sight, out of mind. Granted, I leapfrogged through that year. I always assumed you showed up at some point during the months that I wasn’t there. But, then I realized you didn’t. And I wondered why.”

“I don’t know why either,” River said, her heart aching the way it had months earlier when she had confronted Rory.

“Not long after that … I can’t tell you what happened, River. I don’t think this will change what happens next for your parents.”

“They’re going to die, aren’t they?”

“Everybody dies.”

“But, I’m never going to see them again, am I?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor admitted. “Time was rewritten. Not to the point where the reapers were summoned, but enough to where … well, I hope things are better for you and them.”

“What did you see with the Whispermen, Doctor?”

He didn’t say anything. He gripped her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

“How did you do this without crossing yourself in the past?”

“I went back just far enough to where the timeline splintered.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I can remember a good bit of the original timeline. All I needed to do was send for you before Amy and Rory could find me. Everything else fell into place after that. It wasn’t a fixed point. This year with the cubes wasn’t fixed, so I was able to divert the timeline down that different path. I don’t remember all of the original timeline. The more this timeline took over, the older one faded. I don’t even really remember how we resolved this with the Shakri now.”

“It’s enough to where we can get started though.” She slipped her arms around his waist. “Doctor, you risked breaking time to make things better for me and my parents.”

“Well, you did break time for me.” He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her tightly.

“Am I going to see my parents again?” River repeated.

The Doctor sighed, and his shoulders sagged. “Yes,” he finally said. “You’ll see them again, plenty of times. Both younger and older. For them, though, I gave them an additional two years with you, at least. As for what happens after that, it’s something your older self will figure out. Not even I know the answer to that. You have a relationship with them now.”

“I had one before, Doctor.”

“Not like this.”

“No,” River acknowledged, thinking of her grandparents. “Not like this.”

“I took so much away from you Ponds. And the Whispermen … I can at least give this back to you. Humor an old man, wife.”

“Oh, my love.” She cupped his cheek.

“That’s it, isn’t it? I do care-” He cut himself off, shook his head and squeezed her. “I _love_ you. And I love your parents. I’ve made a mess of their lives so many times. It took traveling with Clara to see that I could make things better for you still. It’s not going to change what will happen in the future for you and your parents, but it’ll make it better.”

“And, what about you?”

He rested his chin atop her curls. “I think it’s made it better for me as well.”

The door opened, and Clara marched in. “OK, that cube out there just began firing _laser bolts_ at me.”

“Doctor!” They heard Amy and Rory running down the stairs. “The cube just spiked us and took our pulses!”

River peered out the door to see Rory with his mobile to his ear. “OK, I’m on my way,” he said and hung up. “That was Ranjit. People are heading to the hospital, saying they were attacked by the cubes.”

“The one in the kitchen is open,” Amy said, then noticed Clara. “Who are you?”

Clara and the Doctor exchanged panicked looks. “Um … well … see,” the Doctor stammered.

“I’m his babysitter!” Clara yelped.

“It’s about time someone other than us is!” Amy smacked the Doctor’s shoulder. “Moron, you know, you can’t hide the fact you’ve been going out. It’s kind of obvious when you get up in the middle of the night and the TARDIS is no longer there.” She stuck her hand out. “Amy Pond.”

“Clara Oswald.” Clara returned the handshake.

Amy’s brow furrowed. “Oswald? Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Ah, ah, spoilers!” The Doctor put his hands over Clara’s ears. “Clara, you go wait in the TARDIS while I-”

“Oh, stop it, chin boy, I’m involved now!” Clara batted the Doctor’s hands away. “Oh, I think that cube over there has started its own YouTube channel. Well, what do we do, River?”

“Yes, what do we do, River?” Amy asked.

“Oi! Hello? I’m the Doctor, I’m supposed to be the one with the answers!”

Amy and Clara rolled their eyes and turned their backs on him to face River, who had scooped up her tablet and was researching the Shakri. “They’re myths,” she said, “every much of a myth as the Pandorica is.”

“Which means, they’re not a myth,” Amy said.

“Mother, spoilers.”

“That sounds weird coming from you. The mother bit, not the spoilers bit,” Clara said.

“They consider themselves to be the pest controllers of the universe, and these cubes are how they attack. The number ‘seven’ is sacred in their culture.” River squinted at the cube. “They’re observing us now, trying to figure out if we’re worth exterminating.”

“Oh, well, that’s pleasant,” Clara muttered as Rory sailed in, one arm shoved into a light jacket.

“I have to get to work. They need all the help they can get.” He kissed Amy and nodded to Clara.

“Right! River, go with them,” the Doctor ordered. “Take Clara. You two can help him them out while Amy, you and I are heading to the Tower of London.” He pulled his psychic paper out of his coat and waved it at them. “Car’s waiting outside. Have your mobile, dear.”

“I have to get dressed. Wait five minutes,” River told Rory and ran upstairs.

“I’m behind you!” Amy said as she followed.

The Doctor tugged Clara aside. “Don’t tell them about-”

“I’m not stupid, far from it. Go with Amy.” Clara gave him a quick hug. “I’ll take care of your missus.”

The Doctor kissed Clara’s forehead.

\-----

“Who is she?” Rory whispered as they walked up to the hospital, Clara a few steps behind. “The Doctor’s never mentioned a Clara Oswald, but when we were in the Asylum, we ran into an Oswin Oswald.”

“I remember you telling me that.”

Rory edged closer to River. “She’s not a Dalek, is she?”

River laughed. “No, Dad, she’s not. But, it’s clear that the Doctor doesn’t know who she’s yet either.”

“Do you?”

“I might.”

“Spoilers?”

“Naturally.”

“Here, take a look!” Clara caught up to them and pointed to the cubes. The number ‘7’ had appeared on all of them, casting an eerie glow into the night.

“They’re done observing,” River said and grabbed Rory’s arm. “We’ve got to get rid of the cubes.”

“Not disagreeing with this.”

“Why?” Clara asked.

“Seven. It’s sacred, remember?” Around them, all the cubes switched to the number ‘6’. “It’s a countdown.”

“A countdown to what?” Rory asked.

“Extermination. Dad, get those cubes out of the hospital, quickly.” River pulled out her mobile and quickly called the Doctor’s. “Sweetie …”

“River, we’re on our way,” the Doctor said. “Kate’s put out a national security alert, but I remember now. I remember more of it. The hospital. I did a scan for the transmitters, and you’re walking right up to one of them. Those cubes, they’ll open when they reach zero.”

“I figured that part out, sweetie.”

“You have to get them away from people, move faster! They’re going to cause everyone to have a massive cardiac arrest when they open. There’s a wormhole in the hospital. Find it, and you can reach the ship to deactivate the cubes. Hurry!”

River shoved the mobile in her pocket. “Clara, stay with me. Dad …”

“I’ll be OK. Do what you need to do.”

River pulled out her tablet as they entered the hospital. “They’ll be on the lookout for someone to try to find their ship. So, we need to stop them first.”

“Like the strange girl glowing blue on the chair?” Clara asked.

River glanced up to see the small girl being ignored in the corner of the A&E waiting room, the glow surrounding her matching that coming from the cubes. “Exactly like that.” She scanned the girl and handled her tablet to Clara. She leaned her forward, hands skimming up the girl’s back until she found the button she was looking for between her shoulder blades. She depressed it, and the girl slumped into River, lifeless.

“Just a doll,” she murmured, and gently laid her down.

“River?” The tablet in Clara’s hands began to beep. “I think there’s a problem.”

River looked up in time to see the countdown on the cubes had completed, and they all opened. “Clara, I need you to-”

The pain as her hearts suddenly seized was unlike anything she’d ever felt other than regeneration. She gasped, pressing her hand to her chest as the world spun about her.

“River!” Clara screamed.

“Cardiac arrest,” she managed as the pain grew worse. “All of us, handling the cubes for so many months. Clara, we’ve got to find the wormhole.”

“We’ve got to get you help first!” Clara spun around to stop an orderly, but nearly everyone was in various stages of cardiac arrest. “Oh, my God.”

River forced herself to remain upright, to grab the tablet from Clara. “It found the wormhole,” she managed. “One dimension away. I’ve still got one heart working, I’ll be fine.”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re lying?”

“Because I am.” River took the tablet back and led the way down the hall.

They followed the map the tablet created from the scans deep into the bowels of the hospital. It was an old floor, filled with discarded equipment, ancient records, and two men with their mouths replaced by black grills waiting for them.

“Hello, boys,” River said, smoothly pulling out her gun and shooting before they could even advance on them. She quickly took out one of men, but another wave of pain caused her second shot to go wild. It smashed into the window of an unused room, sending glass flying. River yanked Clara around the corner as the humanoid deflected the glass.

“River, let me get you help,” Clara begged.

“We’ve got to reach the ship. Turn off the cubes, or reverse them.” Her brain was still working, flying through all the probabilities, the theories. “Something about the energy they’re putting out are causing heart attacks, but maybe we can reverse it and use them as defibrillators.”

“Like the one you clearly need.” Clara looked up in time to see the remaining android raising a hypodermic needle. She shoved River out of the way, gasping when the needle sank into her arm. “Shit!”

“Clara!” River managed to catch her as they fell to the ground together in a heap, the gun spurting out of River’s hand. The pain was steadily growing worse, the world a red haze as she pushed Clara to the side and tried to kick the android away from them. But her legs refused to move, and the world was growing dimmer as she heard her name shouted in the distance. She tried to answer, but her mouth refused to work. With the last of her energy, she threw herself over Clara. I’m sorry, my love, she thought as the world faded away.

\-----

_“No! River!”_

_“Doctor, let me help her.”_

_“It wasn’t supposed to be her. It was never supposed to be her, it was supposed to be me. This is my fault.”_

_“Doctor! Doctor, let go of her, stop the Shakri.”_

_“Get a move on, chin, she’ll kick your ass if you don’t stop them.”_

_“If she wakes up, Pond, tell her …”_

_“She knows! Clara, go with him! Hurry!”_

\-----

The pain pulsed for one second, a massive wave of energy that robbed her breath. Then, her lungs remembered how to function. She took several shaky breaths and realized that she could feel both her hearts. She reached out blindly with one hand, felt a large one close over hers.

“Easy,” Rory said. “We’ve got you.”

River blinked her eyes open. Like so many years ago, just after Berlin, her parents slowly faded into view. Rory had his fingers against the underside of River’s wrist, measuring her pulse while Amy brushed her hair out of her face. “Welcome back,” she said. “You’ve got quite a history of scaring us, you know.”

“Oh, Mother,” River murmured. “That makes life interesting.” She lifted her head slightly and saw she was still in the same hallway where the android had attacked her and Clara. “Where is he?”

“I think he stopped the Shakri,” Amy said. “Rory was about to run off and find a defibrillator when your pulse came back. UNIT’s upstairs taking control of things.”

At the other end of the hall, the Doctor and Clara fell out of the lift. Clara gained her feet first, and with a glad cry, raced to the other end of the hall to throw her arms around River as Amy helped her to sit up.

“Blimey, you scared me back there! The Doctor came right after the droid attacked us, he used these smelling salts but they didn’t work on you. The Shakri ran away. Wasn’t really ever here, but he reversed the cubes’ energy and blew up the ship. You were right about that. It’s all over then?”

“It looks like it.” Hands shoved deep in his pockets, the Doctor approached them. He rocked on his heels as he gazed at his wife. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“Sweetie, it’s not like you caused the Shakri to attack.”

“No, but …” He closed his eyes and turned away.

“Do you need me to punch him for you? I will,” Rory said.

“You are the best, Dad. Let me take care of him.”

“All right. You’re doing well, so I’m going to go check on things upstairs.”

“Is this a blatant attempt to get them alone?” Clara asked Amy.

“Yup.”

“OK, I’m in.”

Amy squeezed River’s shoulder, and she and Clara followed Rory to the stairs.

Exhausted from lack of sleep and the double heart attacks, River leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Just for a second. Then she could deal with her husband. Before she could fully pull herself together, she felt his fingers brush her cheek, and she cracked an eye open to see him looking at her with those big eyes that reminded her of a lost puppy. “Oh, my love …”

“I knew those cubes were Shakri were from the start, even if I didn’t remember all the details” the Doctor said. “I should have neutralized the cubes last July, by March at the latest.”

 “You knew they were the Shakri, but you said it yourself. You rewrote time, so you didn’t know things would happen the exact same way until it did. That’s the way the timelines worked, right?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be you. I was the one who went into cardiac arrest last time. Amy managed to re-start the heart that had gone out. Good old Lefty.” He slipped a hand into River’s hair, softly massaging her scalp. She purred with contentment, and he dropped to the ground next to her.

She laid her head on his shoulder. “So, you remember the other timeline now.”

“Yes. Brian was the one that was here, not Clara. He and Rory were kidnapped, the way you and Clara almost were. And you …” his voice dropped away, and he squeezed her. “I’m so sorry, River. I made a mess of everything.”

“Honey, you didn’t mess things up as badly as you thought.” She traced circles on his thigh. “You made them better for me, my parents, and my grandparents. We still stopped the Shakri, and we saved everyone. Again. Not bad for a rewritten year.”

“I don’t know how far that rewritten time stretches,” he acknowledged. “What else I’ve changed.”

“We’ll deal with it when we get to it. For now, I’d just like to go home. I’m knackered. I want to sleep for hours and spend some time with my parents. You get Clara out of here before Mum realizes how much you’ve rewritten time. And then we’ll face the future together.”

\-----

_P.S._

Brian Williams was used to the sound of a vortex manipulator, almost as much as he’d grown used to the sound of the TARDIS coming and going from his son’s back garden. With a cheerful hum, he lifted his hand to acknowledge his granddaughter. “It’s good to see you, dear,” he said, turning to her. He gasped.

She had lost weight in the few days since she’d come around for their weekly lunch. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and even her curls seemed limp. She was dressed in black: black bodice, black skirt, her hair pinned back. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and he could tell she’d been crying. He dropped the hose, dread snaking through him until it seized his gut and wouldn’t let go. Brian had seen that expression before, in the mirror when his wife had died. Just before he walked into the waiting room to tell Rory.

And now …

“I’m sorry,” River managed and fisted her hands. She took several deep breaths and schooled her face into the stoicism that kept her going, even as her husband was falling apart in the TARDIS. “Oh, Grandad, I’m so sorry.”

Brian trembled, and River quickly crossed the distance and wrapped her arms around him. They clung to each other tightly. “What happened?” Brian managed.

In a shaky voice, River told Brian about the Weeping Angels, how Amy and Rory had gone back to 1938 and would live the rest of their lives in the past. “It was their decision to live together, to be with each other,” she finished. “They had long lives, and I’ll make sure they’re settled and not wanting for anything. I’ll make sure they’re happy.”

“Oh, I made it in time!”

River and Brian looked up to see a portly man at least a decade older than Brian standing at the gate. He clutched a letter in one hand and was giving them a nervous smile. “Hello, big sis.”

“I’m sorry?”

The man strode forward. “Wow, it _is_ weird, being on the other side of this knowledge thing. But, you made sure I was ready. You, Mum, and Dad. I suppose I should introduce myself.” He held out his hand. “My name is Anthony Williams. I’m your brother.”


End file.
